Penelope's Tale
by leslie.borle
Summary: <html><head></head>This is a little something that has been playing through my mind since I started playing Dragon Age. I hope you like it!</html>
1. Unfortunate Beginnings

Six years old. She was only six years old and she was already running for her life. Why did the Maker hate her so much? All her life, she had been told that mages were a scourge upon the land, and she had resented them. All of them, even the Grey Warden mages, as they were allowed to use blood magic. Most of all, she hated the apostates. And suddenly the tides had turned. She was the apostate. She was the scourge. She was cursed by the Maker.

She curled up and cried quietly in her hidey hole in a barn she had run across, trying to stay out of the rain and mud, trying with futility to keep her pretty dress clean. There were already splotches of dried blood where she had tripped and skinned her knees and a rip in the ribbonwork along her waist that left her side bare to the clammy air. The sky was angry, flashing and booming. Maybe the Maker was yelling at her, but she couldn't understand what He was saying. All she could think about was the last few weeks.

She had been a child of noble lineage, a daughter brought up with all she could ever want. Candy and dollies were hers when she asked, and a pony to ride on, a mabari of her own, whom she had named Artemis. She even had been given the voice of robins, or at least that's what her mother told her. All of it was lost to her because of magic.

_Her mother had called for her, wishing to hear her favorite daughter's progress with learning the lute. With six children in the house, Penelope felt flattered that her mother would think of her like that. Her mother sat there, pretty as a painting, as patient and kind as Andraste herself, sipping on a glass of wine. It was an Orlesian wine, freshly delivered._

_"Penelope, my sweet!" she had exclaimed when her daughter rounded the corner, beaming from ear to ear with pride._

_"I did it, Mother! I learned it all the way through!" Penelope squeaked with excitement._

_"Well, let's hear it!" she had grinned and taken another sip. Then a sour look crossed her face. "It would be better cold, I think."_

_Penelope pretended not to notice. Mother often spoke aloud what others kept in the seclusion of their minds._

_"Are you ready?"_

_"Are YOU?" her mother teased, wrinkling her nose adorably._

_She giggled. Her mother was silly, but she was happy. She began to play the song she had just spent two months learning. Her mentor had called it "The Suite of Noble Masses." As she played, the room got colder and colder until frost formed on the wine glass and it became so brittle that it shattered at the touch, the wine dropping to the table in a solid block. This was the first she noticed of the cold, the sound of breaking glass shocking her out of her stupor._

_"Why is it so cold?" she asked, but when she looked at her mother, all she saw was a horrified expression, half sick, and equal parts dread and disdain._

_Her mother seemed stunned at first. She just sat there as though she was a statue and Penelope began to worry that Mother had frozen to death. Suddenly, Mother shot up, grabbed her arm and dragged her to her room, locking her in it._

_"You will stay there until the Templars come for you, you filthy mage!" she spat. The word stabbed through Penelope. Mage?_

_Two days passed and the Templars did not come. She had been so heartbroken by the sound of her mother's voice that she couldn't think, but she knew one thing. She had to get out of there. Luckily, her brother, Alex, thought it was funny to lock his sisters away, and so she had a lot of practice picking locks from the wrong side of the door, and especially this door. She waited until dark and picked the lock when she was certain even the guards had fallen asleep. She hadn't heard any armor clinking for some time, but she still looked at the end of the hall before she crept out the window onto the walls surrounding her home. It was harder to find the tree she could jump to in the dark, but she found it after an hour or so of fumbling along the top of the thin wall. And all she could do was run._

It had been three weeks since then. No Templars, but then again, she had avoided all human contact. It felt like she had been branded, like the whole of Thedas could see her guilt glowing on her skin. This was the first time she allowed herself proper shelter. All the rest of the time, she had slept in the trees and gathered berries and mushrooms for food. She must be almost to Denerim by now. Maybe she could take shelter with the elves, change her name even? They knew about magic, right? Or maybe she could hide in The Wonders of Thedas? Her mother had purchased an enchanted purple gemstone for her there once, and she still wore it about her neck. She wasn't sure what the enchantment was for, but she knew it was enchanted. She could feel it thrum with an energy she couldn't identify. She pondered what the enchantment was well into the night.


	2. The Fires of Fear

She awoke with a start. When had she fallen asleep? She couldn't remember, but right now, she had something else to worry about. That familiar, off-kilter feeling of the Templars was just outside the door. She felt like the world was tilting and about to fall.

Her heart began hammering in her chest. It pounded so hard she swore it would leap onto the floor and that people in the Free Marches could hear it. How would she hide now? There was only one exit on this floor, and the only other exit was on the second floor and she couldn't jump that far without hurting herself. And the Templars were only getting closer.

She strained to hear the conversation.

". . . like a well-paid servant's girl," a man said.

"She must be terrified. She was crying in her sleep when we found her," a soft female voice said. The clinking of armor stopped.

"Don't worry. We'll make sure she's safe and looked after," another man said. This one must be one of the Templars.

"Knight-Commander, ser. What are your orders?" another woman said, obviously trained by her voice alone.

"Take off your armor."

"What?!"

"Are you questioning orders?" the man snapped.

"N-no, ser. Of course not, ser," the woman stammered.

"Then let's move."

There was the sound of buckles being undone, metal lightly hitting other metal, scraping on the now-dry grass. The door cracked open a little. Penelope tried with futility to hide behind the bales of straw. A redheaded woman poked her head through and quickly surveyed the inside of the barn. She ducked back out, but left the door open slightly.

"Clear, but for the child, ser," she said.

Penelope's heart began pounding even faster and panic began welling up inside of her. Where could she go? How could she escape from this? She wanted nothing more than to be normal again, back when she didn't have to fear the Templars, back when she didn't have this curse! She could feel the fear and anger building up.

No, this was just a bad nightmare, right? It couldn't be real. She would wake up and be back in her warm, soft bed.

She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and tried to release her panic in a breath. Instead, she felt it come out of her hands. As suddenly as she had woken up, all the straw around her was burning, hot and fast. She scrambled to get out of the way of the flames, trying to roll to stop her dress from burning any more than it already had. She wasn't just panicked anymore. She was terrified, and that released more instinctual magic, burning everything around her in a flash. Now the flames had claimed the walls too. She had to get out of here! She had to run. Had to hide.

She ran around within the barn, looking for an exit, but the flames and smoke were obscuring her vision, and the air was making it too difficult to breathe. She could hear nothing but the crackling of the flames, see nothing but shades and piercingly bright fire all around her. The frame of the barn was collapsing around her, a support beam crashing down near to her feet. In terror, she bolted as far away from the beam as possible and ended up crashing through the wall. She didn't care anymore. She was out of the flames.

Her eyes darted around, looking for more danger. Where did the Templars go? They weren't there any longer. She breathed a quick sigh and sprinted for the woods as fast as her legs would take her. She HAD to hide.

She ran for what seemed like hours, until she had no more energy, no more will to carry her on. She collapsed onto all fours. The ground here was still wet and covered in mud and leaves, but she no longer cared for keeping clean. She hung her head and began to cry. What was she going to do? Where was she going to go? How would she survive the winter, when it finally came? Life seemed hopeless. And now, even more Templars knew she existed.

Penelope finally opened her eyes to look at her surroundings. It was beautiful. A golden-green light filtered in from the treetops and danced on the glistening leaves all around her, making the water droplets shimmer and twinkle like the night stars. The trees whispered in the breeze that made its way softly through the forest, and the gurgling noise of a nearby stream lent a feeling of serenity to the area. The birds above cried out to one another, flitting here and there in what looked like a game. The squirrels were rushing through the leaves in much the same manner as the birds, making the occasional leaf or seed float lazily down to the ground. All of it just stole her breath.

A wolf howled in the distance. She knew that if she could hear it, it was too close. She forced herself to her knees and then to her feet as she looked around for a tree she could climb. Once she finally chose one, she clamped onto it and began to climb. Before she settled in, she grabbed some vines and fashioned a rope out of them. Then she tied herself to a thick branch and passed into a dreamless, exhausted sleep.


	3. Amicus

It seemed like time flew by as she established a routine. Run until she fell exhausted, sleep, find food, rinse and repeat. It didn't seem like much of a life. All she could do was wallow in despair. Templars sometimes passed as she slept high in the trees, a few of them even stopping beneath her, searching for signs of her around the base of the tree. Was it possible that they had different levels of sensitivity to magic?

She tried to find her way out of the forest, but with the Templars on her heels, she barely noticed that tree she had passed by six times, or that moss-covered rock neat the stream that felt familiar. That feeling of distant familiarity drained her will to continue on to the next day.

Days of warmth and sunlight turned to chilly days that marked the autumn months. The leaves changed colors and she began to panic. The foliage had given her refuge from the prying eyes of the Templars.

When she had finally given up, even turning back to where she knew the barn had been, that's when her life took another unexpected turn. A man's face appeared around a tree. It was a kind face, one of many years of experience, and love seemed to pour from his smiles. His grey-blue eyes twinkled mischievously and he tossed a glance about, searching for signs of pursuit.

"They got you in their sights, eh?" the man asked. "Pity. They should know better than to come through my forest hunting an apostate. Last time I nabbed their commander."

He chuckled at the memory.

"Come, little one. Let us play a game."

She wasn't sure what he meant by a game, or how he knew she was an apostate, but he was her only help. Her only hope. She tried to smile. He was sweet, but there was something in the air about him that gave him away as. . . . as a mage? Yes, he was a mage. When she closed her eyes, she could see a golden aura that outlined his being and it frightened her, but not as much as the Templars and the idea of the Circle did.

He had already begun walking away from her when she opened her eyes again. She had to run to catch up, but when he heard her running, rustling the dry leaves on the ground, he spun around with a look of impending danger and his hands up, telling her to stop.

"There are protective glyphs here, sweet one. I'll guide you through them. There are protective glyphs all around my home, which isn't far away."

She just nodded and let him take her hand. Only a short time later, he stopped and looked at her.

"Do you feel it?" he asked her.

"Feel that weird. . . it's like. . . a wall of air, but it's full of electricity? What is that?" she asked.

"That is an illusionary spell. I have bent the air around my little hut, effectively creating a sort of camouflage," he said. He grinned in satisfaction at his clever little trick. "It can only be sensed by mages and Templars who have had far too much lyrium."

With a whispered incantation and a short wave of his hand, a quaint little hut appeared in front of her.

"Whoa!" she gasped.

He grinned again.

"Impressive, no? But now, to put the pieces of the game in place."

"Um, mister?"

He looked at her curiously.

"What's your name?" she asked sheepishly, grabbing at her dress and twisting the tip of her shoe into the dirt outside his home.

"Amicus, dear. But you can call me Am."

He went back to dragging out a bronze instrument that resembled the one her father used to show her where the stars were showing on the globe at that moment. As soon as he had it out in the open, he leaned against it and huffed.

"You know, I'm getting far too old for this. Anyway, forgive my poor manners. I have yet to beg your name, dearie," he said.

"Penelope. Mother called me Pen, though."

The sadness in her voice tugged at his heart and forced his eyes up from setting the contraption to the right positions. He looked at her just as a tear fell to the floor. He felt that the best thing was to let her grieve by herself and he went back to setting the calibrations. When he was finished, he motioned for her to come over.

"You'll want to see the show," he told her. He snapped his fingers and one of the glass panes was filled with a watery image of the Templars that were pursuing her pushing their way through the forest. She hadn't noticed any spell being cast.

"Now, I need to ask you a favor. Could I have a drop of your blood?"

"For what?" she squeaked.

"Every mage has a unique. . . color to their aura. A unique feeling. I can project that color, that feeling, anywhere in these woods. But I need your blood."

She complied this time. As she let her blood drop into the middle of the instrument, she watched Amicus cast a spell on the contraption, then a shudder in the Veil made her shiver as she felt a duplicate of her power far away. The Templars tensed and ran quickly to what they thought was the source of the power. She looked up and saw a mischievous grin on Amicus.

"Now watch this!"

He muttered another incantation and the Templars tensed once more, running in another direction entirely, taking out their swords this time.

"And once more. You should like this one."

Once more she heard his low voice weave together a spell, but this one was much longer than the others. When she looked up at the image, there was another her, being chased by the Templars.

"There. That should get them off your trail. It's merely a reflection of you, but she can rustle leaves, cast a few spells, and a few more things. She has no emotions, and disappears in three hours time."

"You made another me?" Pen asked.

"Sort of. But this will make the Templars give up. Promise."

And it did. For now.


End file.
